For new album, moe. signs with Sugar Hill

Thursday

Feb 14, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Al Schnier, guitarist/singer of moe., recognizes the irony of his band signing a deal with Sugar Hill Records.

By ALAN SCULLEYFor the Herald-Journal

Al Schnier, guitarist/singer of moe., recognizes the irony of his band signing a deal with Sugar Hill Records.These days, it's become common for groups, especially in the rock genre, to start their own record labels and handle their own distribution and promotion. And here is moe., having released all but two of its previous 10 studio albums on its own label, teaming up with a record company for its most recent album, “Whatever Happened to the La Las.”“We've built a really great cottage industry out of this somehow,” Schnier said, noting that the band is not dissatisfied with the career it has built with its do-it-yourself approach. “After doing it for so many years, though, the one thing that's always sort of eluded us, I guess, was being able to tap into a broader audience or a wider audience or getting some kind of additional exposure. We've always flown under the radar.”And that's where the band hopes Sugar Hill can help. The last time moe. had a record deal, it was on a larger scale. Formed in 1991 in Buffalo, N.Y., the band started out taking the do-it-yourself route, self-releasing its first two albums before signing with Sony 550 Records.The band, which also includes guitarist Chuck Garvey, singer/bassist Rob Derhak, drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist Jim Loughlin, released two albums on that label, but didn't get the kind of boost in its popularity that it hoped would come with the resources of a major label. So moe. returned to releasing its own albums and had stuck with that approach in releasing its four subsequent studio albums.The Sugar Hill deal isn't the only way in which moe. has gone out of its way to try to improve on what it does.For “Whatever Happened to the La La's” the group, for one of the few times in its career, brought in a producer, John Travis.Schnier said the band had started to think its democratic approach to songwriting and arranging might not have been resulting in the best musical decisions.“The thing about that is because we're very much like brothers and democratic almost to a fault, you end up compromising all of the time,” he said. “Nobody is really steering the ship. We kind of all are, and nobody really wants to ruffle any feathers.”Schnier said Travis wasn't shy about directing the band. Many of the songs the band recorded for “Whatever Happened to the La Las” had been played on stage and developed over a period of time. But in the studio, Travis steered the band in new directions on some of the songs.

For example, “Suck a Lemon,” a tune that helps set the rocking tone for the new album, lost an instrumental section the band had been playing. The songs from “Whatever Happened to the La Las” figure to evolve as moe. tours behind the CD. Set lists will vary, but the feel of the show has evolved a bit from recent tours, where the group tried to create more of a structured presentation, to the point that the band was writing and rehearsing instrumental segments of its show.“The idea was to tighten up the show, to really see if we could actually make the show more exciting somehow,” Schnier said. “But I think in the end, we all sort of found that it actually took something away from the show for all of us because there was less freedom in the show, first of all, and it somehow was less fun because you were working so hard and because of the structure. … So since that time, we've kind of gone back to a much looser structure, to the point where we're putting question marks down for where songs should be on our set lists, or just changing things up on the fly.”